Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.

This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1100 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing - especially in the year-end summaries (see links in right sidebar.)

There is a detailedIndexarranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc.

In addition to this most articles have one or more labels at the bottom. Click one to go to similar persons. There is a full list of labels at the bottom of the page. There is also a search box at the top left. Enjoy exploring!

There are still some [transsexuals] to-day known to me of that era who were repeatedly turned away, heartbroken and suicidal, and yet who have managed to struggle on trying to do 'the right thing' and maintain the respect of society. For them the magical dream of being a young girl has gone for ever – they never wanted to be old women! They banged at the door and it creaked a little, making it easier for the next, but they themselves never 'made it' through. It is these less fortunate unknowns, not just the well known cases, that transsexuals have to thank to-day for the recognition given to the syndrome." ~Georgina Somerset

“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.” ~ Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit

"I live for a left that is about freedom, a sexual politics that is about choice." ~ Suzanne Moore

"Respectability politics will always be in conflict with drag, an art form with countercultural subversion at its heart. When these parvenus create new taboos around language, they’re practically begging drag queens and kings to violate these taboos." ~ Andrea James

"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it." ~ Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

“There’s a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can’t help people knowing about you.” ~ Diane Arbus.

" I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends" ~ Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook.

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“Too many individuals are that way; what they do not like must be forbidden and punished. Then they are satisfied. I have even met transvestites who dislike (or pretend to dislike) transsexualism so much that they are against estrogen treatment and operation (for reasons of self protection?). There are also transsexuals who dislike transvestites as well as homosexuals. Intolerance can be found in strange quarters.” The Transsexual Phenomenon, p114-5.Harry Benjamin: Part 1 - tuberculosis.Part 2 -rejuvenation.Part 3 -transsexualism to 1966.Part 4 -transsexualism since 1966.------------------------

As TS Eliot famously said: a bad poet borrows, a good poet steals. Actually he did not. What he actually wrote: "One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion." On this basis Virginia Prince is a bad poet. 1978, when Ariadne Kane introduced Prince to the word 'transgender', was early enough that if Prince had had the gumption and the resourcefulness she could have taken the word and made it hers. To do so would have involved using it more than only three or four times. It would have meant using it regularly and with a force that would have withered the competing usages. Prince was not a major intellect: she was making the same specious claims in 2005 as in 1965; and had not the slightest idea how to weld her theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn. Rather she defaced a rich multivalent word, 'transgender', and attempted and failed in her attempt to reduce and narrow it into something quite inauthentic. She threw it into something which has no cohesion.The Life and Times of Virginia PrincePart 1 – Youth and First marriageBibliographyPart II – Second MarriagePart III – Femmiphilic activist Part IV – Full-time LivingPart V – Transgenderist dowagerJargon terms and general comments Did Virginia Prince have Harry Benjamin Syndrome?The Myth That Transgender is a Princian Concept.

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Autogynephilia/HSTS

"Blanchard’s supporters applaud that he has increased the types of transsexual from one to two. His detractors are appalled that the wide variety of transsexuality has been reduced to two stereotypes."

"a) the first usage of the term was in Paris in 1994, where it was a radical and inclusive term b) the Argentinean usage seems to be closer to the Parisian, than to the Goiar-Kearny usage. c) TS-Si and WBT identified with HBS in 2007, but later disassociated. d) no HBS person has published a history of the HBS movement.e) neither Reucher nor Goiar seem to have discussed the other."

"It seem obvious to many that all transsexuals are initially transgendered in that their gender that does not match their gender identity. It is the essence of transgender to change one’s gender and to keep one’s gender identity."

Trans in prison"One would have thought that the prison authorities would have experimented with inmates without a conviction of violence first, and considered other candidates only later. That is of course if they were sincere in wanting a program of surgery and transfer to actually work. However if they hold the program in contempt and want it to fail, then those convicted of violent crimes are ideal inmates to start the program with."